It will be hard stopping Prema’s Mick Schumacher on Sunday as he scored two more poles in the 2018 FIA European Formula 3 Championship at Spielberg’s Red Bull Ring.
Following on from his lights-to-flag victory in Race 1 to create a 18 points advantage in the championship over Red Bull junior and Motopark’s Dan Ticktum, Schumacher has once again cemented himself on the top taking poles for Race 2 and Race 3 respectively.
The German started Qualifying 2 on a slower note as his rivals set the pace early on. However, once in his rhythm, Schumacher (1m23.170s) then started to set quicker times to not only take the top spot for Race 2 but also Race 3.
Prema teammate Marcus Armstrong (1m23.257s) came close to beating Schumacher but the Kiwi got held up on his quick lap to finish second, demoting Robert Shwartzman (1m23.377s) to third in a Prema 1-2-3.
A late lap from Motopark’s Juri Vips (1m23.437s) helped the Estonian to move ahead of his teammate Jonathan Aberdein (1m23.463s) while Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala (1m23.544s) also showed an improvement on his final lap to push himself to sixth.
This demoted teammate Sacha Fenestraz (1m23.592s) to seventh with Ticktum (1m23.625s) only eighth in the end as the British driver’s struggles continued in the second half of the 2018 European F3 season.
Prema’s Ralf Aron (1m23.629s) finished ninth with Carlin’s Nikita Troitskiy (1m23.646s) rounding out the Top 10 as the Russian matched the time of Prema’s Guanyu Zhou who was classified in 11th.
Position 11-23: Zhou, Fabio Scherer, Ferdinand Habsburg, Enaam Ahmed, Alex Palou, Sebastian Fernandez, Artem Petrov, Kevyan Andres, Marina Sato, Sophia Floersch, Julian Hanses, Ameya Vaidyanathan and Ben Hingeley.
Qualifying 3:
As alluded, the second fastest lap time saw Schumacher remain on the top to take his seventh pole of 2018 after he clocked a 1m23.225s from Shwartzman (1m23.451s), who slotted in second with Aberdein (1m23.488s) in third from Vips (1m23.504s).
The Race 2 front-row starter Armstrong (1m23.530s) was only fifth with Aron (1m23.643s) in sixth from Ticktum (1m23.698s), Daruvala (1m23.748s), Habsburg (1m23.760s) and Zhou (1m23.777s) in the Top 10.
Position 11-23: Fenestraz, Ahmed, Fernandez, Palou, Scherer, Andres, Troitskiy, Petrov, Sato, Floersch, Hingeley, Hanses and Vaidyanathan.